I cover the video game industry, write about gamers, and review video games.
You can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there if you have any questions or comments you'd like to chat about.
Disclosure: Many of the video games I review were provided as free review copies. This does not influence my coverage or reviews of these games.
I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. I do not back any Kickstarter projects related to video games. I do not fund anyone in the industry on Patreon.

Speaking of today’s presidential inauguration, Nader let loose on President Obama and threw a wild punch at video games while he was at it.

“Tomorrow I’ll watch another rendition of political bullsh-t by the newly reelected president, full of promises that he intends to break just like he did in 2009,” Nader said. “He promised he’d be tough on Wall Street, and not one of these crooks have gone to jail—they got some inside trading people, but that’s peripheral.

“We are in the peak of [violence in entertainment]. Television program violence? Unbelievable. Video game violence? Unprecedented,” Nader said. “I’m not saying he wants to censor this, I think he should sensitize people that they should protect their children family by family from these kinds of electronic child molesters.”

Nader joins the ranks of many other elder statesmen in condemning violent video games, connecting our digital experiences with real-life tragedies. His words are eerily similar to the tweets of former GOP primary contender Donald Trump, who said after the Sandy Hook shooting “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”

In other words, the millions of people who play violent video games across the world each day are basically being preyed upon by “electronic child molesters” and are subsequently being turned into “monsters.”

Truly, we are in end times, folks. First it was jazz and then it was rock and roll, followed by the scourge of satanism brought on by Dungeons & Dragons and comic books; fast-forward a few years and it’ heavy metal and The Matrix. Now it’s video games and their “unprecedented” violence.

This is why millions of video game players go on shooting rampages every year. Or something.

Of course, the violence in our culture has nothing at all to do with our foreign policy, or with America’s use of drone strikes responsible for the deaths of at least 178 children on foreign soil, or our foreign wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere, or our military adventures in Somalia, South America, and Eastern Europe, or our near-trillion-dollar yearly defense budget.

Actually, to be fair, I have no idea whether our violent foreign policy creates a more violent domestic populace. The connection is likely tenuous at best, and likely just as difficult to accurately blame as video games. But it is interesting and a little sad that men like Ralph Nader, so-called consumer activists, can pin the violence of individual gunmen with serious mental issues on widespread consumer products that millions of well-adjusted, law-abiding citizens consume on a regular basis.

It’s sad that Nader, who has done some good in the past, should sound so much like Donald Trump. Then again, this is a man who recently penned a book titled “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us” so maybe it’s not really all that surprising.

Of course, Nader and Trump are hardly alone in this latest moral-outrage-crusade. The president has called for research into the effects of violent video games, and numerous politicians are proposing various censorship measures, taxes, and so forth in a concerted effort to curtail free speech—something government officials are often only too happy to attempt. Pundits like Joe Scarborough are calling for “regulations” as though “regulating” free speech somehow skirts the First Amendment.

As Aaron Carroll writes, “I understand why some people don’t like violent video games. I also understand why some people don’t like violent movies or TV shows. But before you start talking about censorship, I want to see some proof. I worry that if you decide (with no good evidence) that you don’t like my video games, and want them gone, then next you’ll come for my movies. Then, maybe, you’ll decide you need to come for my books. That will not do.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

To be fair Erik, at least per what you quoted, there is an important distinction in what the two men said:

“I think he should sensitize people that they should protect their children family by family from these kinds of electronic child molesters.”

“Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”

So at least in the cited Nader quote, he says nothing about video games making people into monsters. What he actually says is that families (note: not the government) should be more vigilant and discerning about the types of media (since he’s not singling out video games) that they let their children interact with.

His use of “molesters” is certainly a step too far, mixing rather different phenomena indiscrimnately and nonsensically.

But I don’t think it’s a bizarre position to take that parents should consider more seriously whether playing a shooter or watching something like Breaking Bad will be “good” for their kid.

Let’s be honest–Jazz might have been received similarly by the old-guard of its day, but beyond a similar tone in the reactionary rhetoric, Jazz really doesn’t have anything in common with a game like Hitman or a movie like Gangster Squad.

This endless debate is really making me tired. Anyone with a brain could sit down for five minutes and list several violent aspects of our culture that have nothing to do with video games. Movies, books, television, music, sports, toy guns, real guns, everything you already listed in your article, etc. I’m speaking only as an American, but I think I can be sure that this extends to several other countries as well. Human beings, for whatever reason, enjoy fake violence (or real violence in the case of sports).

It pervades so many aspects of our cultures that pinning it on video games is not only wrong, but unbelievably stupid. So stupid in fact, that I don’t think anyone in the political sphere actually believes what they’re saying. How could they? How could they complain about violent video games, and then movies like Django Unchained come out, millions of parents take their small children to see it, and nobody blinks an eye? It’s impossible for me to believe that this industry is taking such a big hit because people genuinely believe video games are at fault and don’t have some sort of ulterior motive. Nobody could be that stupid, right? Right?

Well I can’t really fault them as long as “game journalists” basically have the same arguments in regards to the entire “sexism” thing because apparently enjoying breasts or any form of sexualization in ones entertainment not only makes one a bad person, but will turn someone into a woman-hating misogynist pig and therefor is not allowed to exist as that often goes.

Of course the “moral-outrage-crusade” of the few politicians against virtual violence is obviously bad while the other cause is righteous and should be supported, you see?

I think that the entertainment media that we have now is a reflection of our society and its values–not something that drives them. Thus, wildly successful, violent video games or movies show that we enjoy those things–it doesn’t cause us to enjoy them. If the media were truly immersive (you know, where we plugin to the matrix, and it actually seems REAL instead of staring at a screen and controlling the characters by pushing buttons or what have you) then there’d be a much stronger argument that “video games cause violence.”

Even the most uninformed can take a quick look at a few statistics: South Korea has one of the highest percentage of people who play video games (some psychologists estimate that 10% of the children in South Korea are actually addicted), with live competitions that rival basketball in scale and scope in the USA. Yet, South Korea has a murder rate that is nearly half that of the US. In a “bad year” there were a dozen or so deaths attributed to video games–and most of those were self-inflicted.

Video games may present problems (much like ANYTHING taken to extremes will), and it’s worthwhile to look objectively at what those are–but there is certainly no data that suggests that they cause violence.

I want to stay out of this controversy cause I’m not an US citizen. But calling Video Game as Electronic Child Molesters….That just harsh. I think politician’s mouth everywhere not only spouting lies, but foul words too.